By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I decided to be an inventor when I was five. My parents had given me a few various enrichment toys like erector sets, and for some reason I had the idea that if I put things together just the right way, I could create the intended effect.
We had an erector set, and I was an avid fan of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines.
Back in the '40s and early '50s, building simple electronic projects was a popular hobby of many people. Back then, you could buy, you know, a few parts and - with tubes and build something on your kitchen table, and it would actually work.
As a boy, I was deeply interested in scientific ideas, electrical and mechanical, and I read almost everything I could find on the subject. I was attracted more by the hardware and construction aspects than by the scientific issues.
One of my primary objects is to form the tools so the tools themselves shall fashion the work and give to every part its just proportion.
I am a mechanical techie. I can build things with my hands.
In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.
What I wanted to do was build an automobile.
Building a mechanical device for its appearance is like putting lace on a bowling ball.
My explorations of the technical world started with Legos, with which I was quite creative in constructing moving objects with the basic building blocks that were then available.